All-Conquering

We leave Oamaru tomorrow, for two weeks in Alexandra, a town which shares a name with my wife (Gay Alexandra), my granddaughter (Alexandra, born the day I met Gay Alexandra, 25 years ago), and my youngest grandson (Alessandro, aged four and a half, with his name nearer to the Greek original and one of the most skilful and motivational military leaders in world history, Alexandros - Alexander the Great). I also have a great-nephew called Alexander - maybe all this is just another way of Alexander conquering the world.

We have walked almost 100 kms during our week here and have learned more about the town, which was once the same size as Los Angeles (as it was at the same time), and the history of its wonderful buildings.

Time for a couple of corrections. I mentioned recently that viruses are becoming resistant to antibiotics and that they are mutating away from the ability of the antibiotics to deal with them. My statement was of course nonsense. My very good friend Margaret Gregson in Alberta has gently pointed this out to me. As she says:

“I have always been told that antibiotics fight bacteria but there is nothing you can do to fight viruses except give vaccinations before you catch them to make you produce antibodies in your own immune system. Then the over prescribing of antibiotics for mild bacterial infections is what is making the clever little bacteria mutate and become immune and also the practice of adding antibiotics to animal feed to make sure they stay healthy and get fat.(another point in favour of vegetarianism!). If they worked on you then you must have had a bacterial lung infection I would think.”

I admit that I do not know a virus from a bacterium or a spot from a pimple. Thanks to Margaret, I am now better informed. By the way, Margaret is not a vegetarian.

Another mistake I made was when I said how splendid is Cardno’s Accommodation in the Catlins, and how wonderful the hosts, Lyn and Selwyn Cardno. None of that was incorrect, but I omitted to mention the other member of their team - Otto. Otto is schnauzer dog and nobody who stays with Lyn and Selwyn can fail to notice him. He is a very well-behaved dog, except when Selwyn is trying to command him. The visitor’s book is replete with references to him. Sorry, Otto, we think you are great

A Gentle Man

We left the Catlins on Monday morning, having walked, in my case, over 130 kms during our week there. Our normal pattern is to get the walk in early, straight after breakfast, which means we start at about 7.30. We made a special point of walking early on Sunday, because the weather people had been forecasting an exceptionally hot day, probably breaking all temperature records for New Zealand. There was no evidence of this during our three and a half hour walk, in fact it was rather cool. But around lunchtime the weather became very strange. It was exceptionally hot, but we could not see the sun. There was a strong wind, but with a warming rather than a cooling effect. Something like standing in front of a gigantic hair-dryer. The heat had arrived, as predicted, from Australia, but so had ash from the dreadful fires there, which have claimed so many lives. It was the ash which was blocking out the sun and also saving us from those final few degrees which would have provided new records.

Having said goodbye to our most excellent hosts, we drove 200 kms to the north, through Dunedin, to Oamaru, one of our favourite places in New Zealand. We are staying in a self-contained chalet on the Top 10 campsite there, run by the very friendly Tracy and Shane. It is very noticeable on this campsite that almost all the campervans disappear in the morning, leaving the place empty, and that the place fills up again during the afternoon with a new population of vans. This confirms the complaint in the local paper this very week, that Oamaru is regarded by most people as a “tea and pee” stop, many travellers just stopping for a short break on their way from north to south or vice versa, with some stopping overnight to see the famous penguins. Barely time to notice the many superb stone buildings here, made of the local white stone, or the renovated harbour area, also with various historic buildings, many pressed back into service in the tourist trade.

Our regular walk here is shorter than last week’s, and much shorter than next week’s in Alexandra. But it is quite strenuous, and we find that, with other bits and pieces during the day, we are clocking up daily kilometres in the mid-teens. Quite adequate between a week of 20 kms days and two weeks of 25 or more kms days to come.

Every couple of years, Oamaru hosts a stone carving “Symposium”. This is actually a sculpture competition which takes place in the local park which we walk through several times a day, between the campsite and the town centre. Each competitor is given a block of the local stone, which can be sawed or carved, like Portland stone, and proceeds, during the next three weeks, to make of it what he or she will. Some of the results are superb. The sculptors come from all over New Zealand and some from abroad, including Italy and Great Britain. The results are auctioned off and there are also prizes.

It was at one of these symposia, that we met Malcolm Murduck. Malcolm was an architect from Kent, who had taken to sculpture fairly late in life. He had been sculptor in residence at Leeds Castle. Our friendship was instantaneous - we were soon on visiting terms with Malcolm and his wife Jenny. It is a great sadness that our friendship was also brief because Malcolm collapsed and died an unexplained death at the age of 57 in the garden of his Herne Bay home before he could bring Jenny to show her the New Zealand with which he had so quickly fallen in love. Jenny and her two daughters, Sam and Lauren, have since made the pilgrimage here, been welcomed by the symposium organisers and many others, including the people who bought the sculpture Malcolm made while in Oamaru. We did not know him long but the time we had with him was a great privilege for us.

Such a genuine, gentle man. And he obviously made a great impression here, because there is now a Malcolm Murduck prize at each symposium.

Little And Large

We don’t often see these across our path while walking near Puivert. The picture does not give a good impression of the size of this sea lion. This beast is a bull and probably four or five times the size of the sea lions you see in a circus clapping and oinking for the punters. I estimate it weighs at least 200 kgs, possibly 300.

We are spending a week in the Catlins, which is the area of New Zealand bottom right, as you look at a map or a globe. A very quiet area, not a city in sight, the nearest being Dunedin, 100 kms north, or Invercargill, 100 kms to the west. Invercargill hosts the southernmost Starbucks in the world.

We are staying at Kaka point, at Cardno’s accommodation. Lyn and Selwyn Cardno have two motel units attached to their home. We have been here twice before and highly recommend it to anyone wanting to stay in the area. The accommodation is excellent and the Cardnos are most friendly and welcoming. They have become good friends.

More details of Cardno’s accommodation can be found at their website:

http://www.cardnosaccommodation.co.nz/

If you travel south from here you will need a boat with a reinforced bottom and some clothing with built-in heating, because you will end up in Antarctica. If you head east you may nudge the tip of South America before you arrive back in New Zealand, but nothing else will impede your progress. If you walk west along the beach, you will have to dodge a few seals and sea lions and also hop onto the road a couple of times to avoid rocky areas before you arrive at Nugget Point lighthouse. Selwyn’s great-grandfather used to be in charge of that, but it is all automatic these days.

The walk to the lighthouse and back is 20 kms and I have done that every morning straight after breakfast. Gay has set out with me every day and has ventured further each time, before turning back for “home“. Yesterday and this morning she did the whole walk with me without any ill effects, so presumably her full recovery has coincided with the end of the course of antibiotics, which seem to have done the trick in getting rid of the cough and debilitation.

This is a great area for watching seals and sea lions, numerous types of seabirds and penguins. It is also superb for getting in a lot of exercise with minimum interference from traffic.

Another thing we have seen on the beach for the first time is krill. These are tiny creatures, like shrimp but much smaller. We see them scattered along the high water mark and marvel that these are the main food of the giant whales. A blue whale, which weighs about 100 tons, has to eat huge quantities of these per day. I can’t remember the figure, but it is probably over a ton per day of krill, which must be untold numbers of the creatures. Surely it would make more sense for the whales to eat a couple of sea lions per day?

Scone Palace

It was a long drive from Akaroa to Alexandra on Saturday - marginally under 500 kms. When we arrived I went for a walk to bring the days total to 10 kms. I have a new policy of walking at least 10 kms, even on the days when travel or weather has prevented me from setting out for a normal training walk. The new policy came about after I realised that because of one thing or another I have lost almost a month recently. It is not obsessive kilometre counting, just that it feels so hard to plunge back into 20 or 30 kilometre days after doing nothing, even for a few days, never mind 4 weeks. So the 10 kms a day policy is just to maintain smoothness and a tickover.

Sunday morning I walked from Alexandra to Clyde along the river route. As with so many places in New Zealand, there is much evidence of gold extraction. NZ really did seem to be paved with gold in those days. I set off without breakfast because at the Post Office (now a café and restaurant) in Clyde they have some wonderful world-class date scones. I had one of those and a coffee for my breakfast. I was ready for it, after walking 15 kms on an empty stomach. Normally Gay would have been walking with me (although she would have been full of porridge or cereal) but because she has not yet recovered from the chest infection, she drove out to Clyde to meet me. We had my breakfast, her tea, and a look at the papers together, before I set off for the return trip, this time 10 kms via the first section of the Central Otago Rail Trail. Gay drove back.

There was a very strong wind, which shifted me sideways a couple of times. Nothing like the colossal storm which has caused so much damage in the Pyrenees areas of both Spain and France recently. When we first heard of this we wondered whether our home village of Puivert had escaped. Then I read Randy’s Possumworld blog and she was talking about the damage and power outages in Chalabre, which is only 8 kms from Puivert. Fortunately, we managed to contact our neighbours and discovered that, although there had been roofs torn off and the like, our house seems to be OK.

Our stay in Alexandra was short, and was designed so that we could attend, on Sunday afternoon, the Cromwell Country Music Club, which meets on the first Sunday of every month. There is a resident band and a constant stream of people arriving with guitars, putting their names on a blackboard, then when their turn comes, getting up to sing a couple of songs. Some are better than others, of course, but we find it admirable that so many people will get up and have a go.

We shall be back in Alexandra for the second half of the month, as we find it a most excellent place to exercise, but on Monday we drove a couple of hundred kms to the Catlins. More about that later.

Enough Is Enough!

At last I have managed to do some walking!

We were at the doctor's again on Thursday – a different doctor. This does not mean we are hypochondriacs, despite the fact we live in France, the home of health insecurity and a very secure place to be a pharmacist. We always have our annual medical check-up in New Zealand rather than at home. It is well known that the health service in France is excellent, but we feel happier having our check-up in English, just in case something does crop up, some technical term which could possibly get lost in translation.

We saw our regular NZ doctor, Michael Thwaites. As with the doctor in Akaroa, he said we should take antibiotics to clear up the persistent infection. Having had a few more days without improvement or prospect thereof, this time we snapped his hand off and started guzzling the pills with gusto.

Coincidentally or otherwise, I feel much improved. Gay, who seemed to catch the infection from me and is therefore a few days behind in the cycle, is still quite ill.

So I have managed to salvage some exercise from our week in Akaroa, which looked as if it was going to be a complete washout. The kms for the past 3 days have been 10, 13, then 14 today. The last two walks were extremely hilly. Tomorrow we move on to Alexandra for a couple of days, then to the Catlins on the South coast of New Zealand (next stop Antarctica) for a week.

We are nothing without our health, are we? In the past month I have had more to remind me of that than the paltry infection already mentioned. In mid-December my eldest daughter Karen told me the doctor was sending her for tests for throat cancer. Unbelievably, in the same week my youngest daughter Nicola said she was waiting for a CAT scan and a MRI scan of her brain, with a possibility of a brain tumour. Karen had her tests a few weeks ago and was cleared. Nicola did not get her scans until a couple of days ago and she, also, is OK. But it was not a happy time.

Physician, Heal Thyself?

This is just the sort of thing I do not want to happen when I am in the middle of VBW. Bowling along, happy as Larry, when wallop! Along comes a virus, reducing me to a coughing, quivering wreck.

It has been going on for a week now – a week in which I have done barely any walking, except for the surprising amount one does around town, and even that has been a bit much for me. I would certainly have felt incapable of doing 180 kms (which will be my average weekly walk from May to July next year) during that time. And if I had forced myself to walk anyway (as I would feel inclined to do when under the pressure of the 70-day deadline) I would likely have made myself more ill than I am now. I remember once going ahead with a marathon, despite feeling under the weather – I did not cover myself in glory during the race, but I was severely ill for the next week or two – a colleague rang me at home but put the 'phone down when I answered – he though he had dialled a wrong number when he heard such an old man on the line. I was about 40 years old at the time.

I am very reluctant to use antibiotics. Like most people, I know that all that is happening is that I am training the virus to adapt and to tolerate the drug, and that eventually there will not be an antibiotic which has any effect at all.

But after a week of coughing and wobbling, Gay and I went to the doctor here in Akaroa on Monday, as it seemed the enemy was not going to go away on its own. The doctor, who went to school at Rossall, not 10 miles away from my own school in Poulton-le-Fylde, confessed that he was suffering from a similar ailment himself! He offered us some antibiotics, if we wanted to use them, but said that the illness will blow itself out after 10-14 days. We decided to let the sickness run its course, despite the effect it is having, of completely curtailing our athletic activities.
If I am stricken with a virus while doing VBW, it will be a different story. It will be “gimme the tablets” and sod the future. With only 70 days allowed for the walk, I will not be able to afford to lose a week.

As mentioned, we are in Akaroa, which in many ways is a little bit of France in New Zealand. In 1840, the Maori chiefs were persuaded to sign a treaty with the uniformed representatives of Queen Victoria, turning New Zealand into a British colony, like much of the rest of the world at that time. Not long before this happened, some French explorers had discovered the Banks Peninsula, on which Akaroa lies. They were very taken with it and scurried home to raise an expedition to colonise it on behalf of France. Four shiploads of eager French settlers arrived at the British colony just too late to claim it for their own country but decided to stay anyway. Most of them, or rather their descendants, have dispersed around the country now, but there are still some French names about. Many of the streets have French names. Also many of the businesses, although this is clearly a marketing ploy, as the usage of the French language on the signs is pretty comical and obviously not handed down from the original French settlers.

The huge harbour at Akaroa was once a mountain, a volcano in fact, which blew its top, and also its bottom, long ages ago. The result is a beautiful setting for a splendidly photogenic little town which is a major tourist draw and one of our favourite places on earth. When you visit New Zealand, as everybody should do at least once in their lifetime, it it is one place you must see.

Vic's Small Walk

As you know, this is a blog about walking. I suppose it was optimistic to think that I could continue to get daily use from my ten-league walking boots in the middle of winter. There have been many interruptions of late. Not least in the past two weeks, since Gay and I left home to traverse snow-bound France on the way to visiting relatives and friends in UK en route to a 3-month stay in New Zealand, where the opportunities for long distance walking are boundless, and where, miraculously, it is mid-summer.

After the long flights from Manchester to Singapore and then, following an overnight stay, Singapore to Christchurch, we would hit the ground running, or at least walking strenuously. We arrived in NZ on Tuesday to the shock, after the exceptionally cold start to winter in Europe, of temperatures in the high 20s or low 30s. One overnight in Christchurch, then off to Oxford, 50 kms north, where, during a 3-day visit with our friends Denise and Robin Illingworth, we would “conquer” Mount Oxford and indulge in a couple more long walks and/or cycle rides while we acclimatised.

The actuality is that in my case I hit the ground coughing. My legs hit the ground wobbling. An angrily sore throat was also one of the symptoms. Presumably I had fallen victim to the famed ability of an aircraft's air-conditioning system, to redistribute germs and viruses from one sufferer to unsuspecting passengers in another part of the machine.

I walked 10 kms on Tuesday, 12 on Wednesday, then 4 on Thursday. The second half of the 4 kms walk was consumed by dragging myself back to our accommodation because I was exhausted by a 2 kms walk into Oxford town. Big Walker? The next day I managed 6 kms, so presumably there is some improvement in my condition, although my still coughing all night and day does not support that theory.

We spent today removing ourselves to Akaroa for a 7-day visit. The plan here is to tackle each day a 3-hour walk (that's how long it normally takes us, although it is billed as 4.5-6 hours), which also includes a climb from sea level to 600 metres. I fear that we shall have to settle for something less ambitious, at least for the next couple of days. Or more, in Gay's case, as she is now starting to display the same symptoms. At least she has someone to blame!